Thanks to the Twitter Files, government whistleblowers, and the dogged determination of a few investigative journalists, the American public is well aware that the federal government, primarily under the Biden administration, has engaged in outright censorship, violating Americans' fundamental right to freedom of speech.

Moreover, as documented in a recent ruling by U.S. district judge Terry Doughty, the Biden administration, "coerced, significantly encouraged, and/or jointly participated [with] social-media companies to suppress social-media posts by American citizens that expressed opinions that were anti-COVID-19 vaccines, anti-COVID-19 lockdowns, posts that delegitimized or questioned the results of the 2020 election, and other content not subject to any exception to the First Amendment. These items are protected free speech and were seemingly censored because of the viewpoints they expressed."

In short, this is a blatant violation of the U.S. Constitution, which specifically prevents the government from directly or indirectly facilitating the suppression of free speech.  Furthermore, it raises questions as to what else the Executive Branch has done, or is doing, behind the scenes to diminish, and in some cases silence, the speech of American citizens that it deems counterproductive to its policy objectives.

Fortunately, a simple bill (incredibly, it is only 19 pages) has been introduced that would drive a stake through the heart of this completely un-American practice of free speech suppression.

The bill, aptly named the Free Speech Protection Act, was introduced by Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Rep. Jim Jordan (R-Ohio) and seeks to "prohibit executive branch employees and contractors from using their positions to censor and otherwise attack speech protected by the First Amendment."  As written, the bill would also "impose mandatory severe penalties for those executive branch employees who censor speech," including fines of up to $10,000 per instance of free speech violations.

"Censorship is a major threat to freedom today.  It is clear that Big Government must be more transparent, and that bureaucrats must be held accountable for censorship.  The Free Speech Protection Act accomplishes that and gives individuals remedies for censorship to protect vital First Amendment freedoms," said Rep. Jordan, chairman of the House Judiciary Committee.

According to Sen. Paul, "Americans are free people and we do not take infringements upon our liberties lightly.  The time has come for resistance and to reclaim our God-given right to free expression.  Under my Free Speech Protection Act the government will no longer be able to cloak itself in secrecy to undermine the First Amendment rights of Americans."

To that, I say, hallelujah!

For the past two years at least, we have ample evidence that President Joe Biden has used the unyielding power of the administrative state to collude with and bully social media companies from posting news (like the Hunter Biden laptop story) as well as the opinions of everyday Americans that the administration considers detrimental to its preferred narrative.

Although the administration likes to categorize the speech it disagrees with as "misinformation" or "disinformation," that does not permit the federal government to work through back channels to silence or suppress "inconvenient" speech.

As Sen. Eric Schmitt (R-Mo.) explains, "I'm proud to join Senator Paul and Representative Jordan in working to dismantle this vast censorship enterprise.  This censorship should scare every American — regardless of political affiliation, and government does not get to outsource their censorship to social media companies."

To ensure that the Executive Branch is unable to continue in this diabolical endeavor, the bill would

[m]andate frequent publicly accessible reports from the heads of executive branch agencies detailing the communications between an executive branch agency and Big Tech.

Ensure that federal grant money is not misused to label media organizations as sources of misinformation or disinformation.

Terminate several programs and authorities that threaten free speech and other constitutionally protected rights.

One would assume that a bill such as this would receive widespread bipartisan support, seeing as how both parties could potentially engage in free speech suppression.  However, for whatever reason, the bill has been supported by only Republicans to date.

I hope, but don't expect, some Democrats support this bill because this issue is vital to the future of our country.  If we the people must live in fear that our inalienable right to freedom of speech is in peril due to coordination between Big Government and Big Tech, simply put, we don't live in a free county anymore.

Chris Talgo (ctalgo@heartland.org) is editorial director at The Heartland Institute. 

Image: Free SVG.